Plans, Pricing & Setup

Choosing the Right Plan

In Lesson 1, you saw that 60% of companies get no value from AI. Poor plan selection is part of why — either paying for features they don’t use, or using free plans that put company data at risk.

Here’s the breakdown that actually matters for business decisions:

Plan Comparison

The decision framework:

• Solo professional, no sensitive data: Plus ($20/mo)
• Team of 2-150, handles any client/company data: Team ($25-30/user/mo)
• 150+ users, compliance requirements (SOC 2, SAML SSO): Enterprise (~$60/user/mo)
• Exploring/learning: Free (but never paste sensitive data)

✅ Quick Check: Your company’s legal team wants to use ChatGPT for contract review. They handle confidential client agreements. What’s the minimum plan? Team — it guarantees data isn’t used for training and provides admin controls. Enterprise is better if they have SOC 2 compliance requirements. Free and Plus are never appropriate for confidential client data.

The Data Training Question

This is the most misunderstood aspect of ChatGPT for business.

Free and Plus plans: By default, your conversations may be used to train future models. You can turn this off in Settings → Data Controls → “Improve the model for everyone.” But it’s opt-out, not opt-in. And most employees don’t know to change it.

Team and Enterprise plans: Conversations are never used for training. Period. This is contractually guaranteed, not a setting you need to remember to toggle.

Why this matters: Research found that 34.8% of employee ChatGPT inputs contain sensitive data — up from 11% in 2023. People paste customer emails, product roadmaps, contract language, and financial data into ChatGPT every day. On a free plan, that data could influence future model outputs.

Setting Up Your Workspace

Once you’ve chosen a plan, set up for productivity:

Step 1: Configure data controls

• Settings → Data Controls → Disable training data sharing (Free/Plus)
• On Team/Enterprise, this is already disabled by default

Step 2: Set up Projects Projects keep related conversations organized. Create projects for:

• Each major initiative (Q2 Marketing Campaign, Product Launch, Hiring Sprint)
• Ongoing functions (Customer Support Templates, Weekly Reports, Meeting Prep)
• Each client or account (if applicable)

Projects share context across conversations. Add instructions, files, and templates that apply to all chats within a project.

Step 3: Create Custom Instructions Under Settings → Personalization → Custom Instructions, define:

• Your role and industry context
• How ChatGPT should respond (tone, format, length)
• What it should always or never do

Example for a marketing manager: “I’m a B2B SaaS marketing manager. When I ask for content, default to professional but conversational tone. Always include specific metrics or data when making claims. Format outputs with headers and bullet points for easy scanning. Never use clichés like ‘game-changer’ or ‘cutting-edge.’”

Step 4: Set up Memory (if available) Memory lets ChatGPT remember facts across conversations. Tell it things like:

• “Our company name is Acme Corp”
• “Our target audience is mid-market SaaS companies”
• “I prefer tables over paragraphs for data”

This prevents repeating context in every conversation.

Team Setup Specifics

For Team and Enterprise administrators:

Admin console basics:

• Add/remove users through the admin dashboard
• View usage statistics (messages, active users, top GPTs)
• Manage workspace-wide Custom GPTs
• Set domain verification for SSO

Onboarding your team:

1. Send invites through the admin console
2. Share 3-5 starter Custom GPTs relevant to your team’s work
3. Create a shared Project with company context and style guides
4. Set a clear usage policy (what’s OK to put in, what’s not — covered in Lesson 7)

Key Takeaways

• Plan selection matters: Free for learning, Plus for individual professionals, Team for business use with data privacy, Enterprise for compliance needs
• Team and Enterprise guarantee your data isn’t used for training — Free and Plus require manual opt-out
• 34.8% of employee inputs contain sensitive data — plan choice directly affects data risk
• Set up Projects to organize work, Custom Instructions for consistent outputs, and Memory for persistent context
• Team admins: invite users, share starter GPTs, create a shared Project, and set a usage policy from day one

Up Next

You’ve got the right plan and your workspace is set up. In Lesson 3, you’ll learn the prompting framework that turns ChatGPT from a chat tool into a business productivity engine — the Context-Role-Constraints-Format method used by the top 5% of business users.